Filtering science through conspiracy

At the risk of starting a conspiracy theory that I write about conspiracy theories to cover up my involvement in conspiracies, I’m going to write about them again. (True story – a supposed journalist one exposed me as a member of the Illuminati, the world’s most secret secret society. The revelation was made on the web site of noted kook David Icke, the man who thinks the British Royal Family are lizards. Another journalist, editor of a high-circulation Australian "alternative" magazine, disputed the claim, not on the basis that the Illuminati doesn’t exist but because he didn’t think I was smart enough to be a member. I told him that setting membership qualifications was above my pay grade and in any case I couldn’t discuss it.)

In September this year I wrote about research that indicated that acceptance of one conspiracy theory was a reasonable indication of acceptance of others. This was not really surprising, as lack of critical thinking ability would be expected to generalise across various belief systems, but it was good to see some more confirming research.

The authors (Stephan Lewandowsky, Gilles E. Gignac and Klaus Oberauer) have published further research looking at the effect of political leanings on the acceptance of some current issues that are often clouded by accusations of conspiracy – climate change, genetically modified foods and vaccination.

Their initial assumption was what "common sense" would predict – right wing thought would lead to a rejection of climate change on economic grounds (too expensive to fix, it’s all happened before so why worry, too much restriction on business activity, …), left bias would lead to rejection of GMOs and vaccination (domination by Big Pharma and Big Farmer, controls on consumer freedom of choice, …). What they found, however, was a little surprising.

The results on climate change denial were as expected – rejection is driven by opposition to regulation and at times can look to be almost totally political or commercial. (I know several long-term and very strong and active supporters of the skeptical movement in Australia who are devout climate change deniers. All are open about their political affiliation and one makes no secret of his involvement in the mining industry.) The connection between politics (of either left or right) and resistance to GMOs and vaccination was a lot less clear, although this has also been found in earlier research by others. It looks like common sense is not a useful tool for making predictions about the way that political alignment affects attitudes to some of the major issues facing society.

One thing that links all of these issues is that they are based on scientific research, and in each case there is a preponderance of science and scientists pointing one way and a small minority of scientists who reject the consensus. This is nothing new, and there have always been those who claim that the dominant paradigm in some area of science is wrong. Sometimes mavericks are right and accepted knowledge is either replaced, extended or significantly modified. Most of the time, however, they are wrong and following their ideas leads to dead ends and wasted effort and resources.

The authors looked for something else that might be a predictor of opinion on these issues and found one – conspiracy ideation. Many conspiracy theories are based on the idea that there are secrets known only to a minority and that the majority who follow the orthodox position reject or suppress the truth. It should come as no surprise then that people with strong beliefs in active conspiracies should reject the majority view in matters of scientific debate.

The conclusion of the paper says:

"Free-market worldviews are an important predictor of the rejection of scientific findings that have potential regulatory implications, such as climate science, but not necessarily of other scientific issues. Conspiracist ideation, by contrast, is associated with the rejection of all scientific propositions tested. … The involvement of conspiracist ideation in the rejection of science has implications for science communicators".

I was recently part of a forum discussing the public understanding of science. We talked about the state of science education and the lack of good science writing in the media, but it seems we might have missed the real problem. My local newsagent carries three or four copies each of the three Australian popular science magazines and a couple of imports but has large stacks of magazines touting hidden alien bodies and the dangers of GMOs and vaccines. The last sentence in the conclusion above is something that everyone trying to communicate science to the public needs to recognise – the barrier might not be scientific illiteracy per se but a mindset that treats all science with suspicion. We have to think differently about how we get the message out or it might never be received.

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